{"id":152311,"date":"2018-02-11T22:12:57","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T03:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=152311"},"modified":"2018-02-11T22:12:57","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T03:12:57","slug":"blackout-hits-northern-puerto-rico-following-fire-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/02\/11\/blackout-hits-northern-puerto-rico-following-fire-explosion\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackout hits northern Puerto Rico following fire, explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Solar<\/a>
Solar light used by San Juan Mayor Carmen Cruz because of the blackout (Photo<\/a>: @CarmenYulinCruz\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A blackout hit northern Puerto Rico late Sunday after an explosion set off a big fire at a main power substation in the U.S. territory.<\/p>\n

Officials with the island’s Electric Power Authority said several municipalities were without power, including parts of the capital of San Juan.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately known what caused the fire, although officials said the explosion knocked two other substations offline and caused a total loss of 400 megawatts worth of generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are trying to restore that as quickly as possible,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n

Heavy black smoke billowed from the substation as neighbours in the area described on social media seeing the sky turn orange following a loud explosion. San Juan Mayor Carmen Cruz tweeted that no injuries had been reported and that firefighters were on the scene.<\/p>\n

The blackout comes as more than 400,000 power customers remain in the dark more than five months after Hurricane Maria. The Category 4 storm destroyed two-thirds of the island’s power distribution system and caused up to an estimated $94 billion in damage.<\/p>\n

Puerto Rico’s governor recently announced that he plans to privatize the state-owned power company, which is $9 billion in debt and relying on infrastructure nearly three times older than the industry average. It would be the largest restructuring of a public entity in U.S. history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A blackout hit northern Puerto Rico late Sunday after an explosion set off a big …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":152312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[46374,46373,24215,11024,3814],"class_list":["post-152311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","tag-carmen-cruz","tag-electric-power-authority","tag-hurricane-maria","tag-puerto-rico","tag-san-juan","mauthors-danica-coto","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}